BENJAMIN SILLIMAN 91 



ready for progress, always welcoming new light, always encourag- 

 ing the young and seconding their endeavors. 



The ancestry of this eminent man was of the best New England 

 stock. His grandfather, Ebenezer (Yale, 1727), was a Judge of 

 the Superior Court of Connecticut, and the proprietor of a large 

 landed estate in Fairfield. His father, Gold Selleck Silliman, a 

 successful lawyer, who had graduated at Yale in 1752, took an 

 active part in the Revolutionary struggle, and acquired the rank 

 of Brigadier- General in the Connecticut militia. He was en- 

 gaged in the battles of Long Island, White Plains and Ridge- 

 field, and was charged with the defense of southwestern Connect- 

 icut from the incursions of the enemy. So active did he become 

 that a special expedition was sent by Sir Henry Clinton for his 

 arrest, which was effected at midnight, May n, 1779, at his 

 house on Holland Hill. After military imprisonment for a year, 

 General Silliman was restored to his family. Soon after her 

 husband's arrest, Mrs Silliman retreated, with her eldest child, 

 to a retired settlement, not far away, then called North Stratford, 

 and now Trumbull. Here Benjamin was born, August 8, 1779. 

 When he was eleven years old, his father died, July 21, 1790, 

 in the fifty-ninth year of his age. 



The mother traced her descent from John Alden and Priscilla 

 Mullins, of the Mayflower Pilgrims, whose romantic story has 

 been told by the poet Longfellow. She was the daughter of 

 Rev. Joseph Fish, for fifty years a Congregational minister in 

 North Stonington, Conn. Her death occurred in 1818 when her 

 son, at the age of forty years, had acquired distinction. 



Both parents were of unusual excellence, well born, but not 

 in affluence, well placed, well connected, well educated, very 

 patriotic and deeply religious. 



Until the death of the mother, the home of the Silliman family 

 continued to be in that part of Fairfield known as Holland Hill, 

 some two or three miles from the village. Upon the same lofty 

 ridge, commanding a beautiful view over Long Island Sound and 

 its adjacent coasts, is Greenfield Hill, where Timothy Dwight, 

 afterwards President of Yale College, maintained an academy 



